


Busman's Holiday

by Stacicity



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is a smug bastard, Aziraphale isn't a good angel but he's an even worse demon, Aziraphale may also be Crowley's worst enemy, Crowley is a terrible demon and an equally-terrible angel, Crowley is his own worst enemy, M/M, Rating will go up, Role-Reversal, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 23:50:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19756282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: “Think about it. All the little indulgences you’ve denied yourself because it wasn’t angelic. All the times you’ve wanted to tell your customers to just bloody well sod off and leave you be. All those second-helpings at the Ritz.”A drunken conversation leads to a wager - of sorts - that has Aziraphale and Crowley taking advantage of their newfound freedom to do whatever they want. Any act they can think of, moral or otherwise, no matter what their respective Sides would think of it. It sounds easy enough - but everybody wants freedom right up until they get it.





	1. Chapter 1

The strangest thing about the end of the world wasn’t what did happen so much as what  _ didn’t _ . Crowley and Aziraphale dined at the Ritz, returned to Aziraphale’s shop (not so much as a speck of dust out of place, though the shelves were stocked with rather more battered, dog-eared first-editions of Biggles and Just William than he thought he’d had before) and proceeded to get heroically drunk. In other words, business as usual. 

“It’s like...it’s like being on  _ holiday _ ,” Crowley exclaimed, beaming over at Aziraphale who was staring rather more morosely into his snifter of brandy (which in turn was feeling more than a little confused given it had been a glass of wine only a few moments ago). 

“Fired, you mean,” he tutted, and Crowley shook his head frantically, half-dislodging his sunglasses so they hung from one ear and drooped over his nose. 

“No,  _ not _ fired. Look. I can still do this.” He waved the hand not currently holding a drink and Aziraphale blinked in surprise to find his worn, comfortable armchair replaced with an equally worn but considerably less comfortable rhinoceros. The rhinoceros took stock of its situation, weighing up the pros and cons of its new surroundings. On the one hand, it rather liked the grassy plains of its home. On the other, there were fewer zebra barging it out of the way to get to the good grazing patches, and a bowl of brightly-coloured and intensely sugary things for it to munch on. Aziraphale gave Crowley a disapproving look with as much dignity as one could expect from somebody on top of an ungulate determinedly eating its way through a bowl of jelly-babies.[1]

“You  _ can _ . I wish you wouldn’t. I liked that armchair.” He snapped his fingers and the rhinoceros disappeared abruptly, leaving Aziraphale nestled in his armchair again. “There. Back to the jungle with you.” 

“Savannah.”

“Hm?” 

“Savannah. That’s where rhinos come from.” 

“Oh.” Aziraphale looked guiltily at his hand. “Well. It seemed an obliging sort. It’ll be fine.” 

“My  _ point _ is that we still have all the perks of being occult.”

“Ethereal.”

“ _ Whatever _ , angel. We’re not human. And we’ve been let loose on Earth to do more or less whatever we choose for the rest of eternity. And -  _ and _ \- no sides. No Heaven telling you to be angelic or Hell telling me to be demonic. We can do whatever we want.” 

“You mean-”

“ _ Free will _ . All the perks of being human, none of the downsides!” Crowley grinned widely - and rather unsteadily - at Aziraphale, who considered this for a few seconds and then abruptly downed his brandy, the glass refilling more or less as soon as he’d set it down again. 

“I don’t think I know how to be human.” 

“ _ Think _ about it. All the little indulgences you’ve denied yourself because it  _ wasn’t angelic _ . All the times you’ve wanted to tell your customers to just bloody well sod off and leave you be. All those second-helpings at the Ritz.” 

Aziraphale drew himself up indignantly from his half-slumped position in the armchair, doing his best to focus on Crowley with bleary eyes and reaching out to right his sunglasses for him. 

“Now, look here. If this is some ham-fisted attempt at a temptation I shan’t have it, you old serpent. You know the rules. The Prague Accord.” [2]

Crowley made a face. He didn’t like being reminded of the Prague Accord. 

“And anyway,” continued Aziraphale, well and truly into his stride by now, “if that’s the case, then what about  _ you _ ?” 

“What about me?” 

“Well, you don’t have to be demonic anymore.” 

Crowley gave Aziraphale a Look. Might as he liked to say that he was still as much the demon he had been back in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, they both knew he’d given up on anything really vile sometime around the 3rd century. Humans were just better at it. 

“You mean I don’t have to go about encouraging patricide, fratricide, matricide and...and….”

“Uxoricide?” Aziraphale suggested helpfully, “Regicide? Pesticide?” 

“You decide. Well, it’ll be a bit of a blow to my daily routine, but I think I’ll struggle through.” 

“That,” Aziraphale leaned forward to jab a finger at Crowley’s chest, overbalanced, and ended up with his forehead resting against his shoulder, “is not what I’m talking about,” he told Crowley’s knees firmly. “I’m talking about indulgences.” He righted himself (nearly head-butting Crowley in the jaw as he did so), leaning sideways against the arm of his chair and grinning in a rather-too-satisfied way. 

“Right,” said Crowley, more than a little unnerved by the way that Aziraphale was looking at him. “Indulgences. I’ve got those. Indulgences coming out the wazoo, that’s me.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes to prove his point, lighting one with a spark from one finger and puffing out a stream of smoke. Aziraphale glared at it until it floated helpfully towards the front windows of the shop, passing through the glass away from the books, and then leaned in to steal one for himself, brandishing it pointedly in the air until Crowley lit it for him. 

“Not that sort of indulgence. This is the sort of vice that a human might be ashamed of.”

“Or an angel.”

“Why? It’s hardly as if I’ve got lungs that I need worry about corrupting.” 

“Your body is a temple, angel.” 

“And a fully-stocked temple it is too, my boy: wine, incense and all,” Aziraphale smiled sweetly at Crowley. “ _ Anyway _ . This isn’t really the sort of thing that a demon would be ashamed of - the sort of thing that a demon might  _ indulge _ in.” 

Crowley had the horrible feeling that he’d been played. He tried to drown the feeling in a large gulp of wine, then another, trying to figure out exactly what Aziraphale meant.

“Er. And that sort of thing would be-”

“Oh, I don’t know. Helping little old ladies across the road. Giving to charity.  _ Niceness,  _ I suppose.” 

Crowley scowled, taking another defiant drag of his cigarette and glaring out the window for a moment. It did stand to reason. Though it seemed like Aziraphale was very much getting the better end of this deal; he  _ already _ liked enacting Gluttony, Pride, Sloth and so on. The Heavenly Virtues just weren’t half as much  _ fun _ . 

“So you want me to indulge myself by being patient and diligent,” he said flatly. “And you’re sure that this isn’t you enacting your own angelic nature by trying to coax me into self-betterment.” 

“Well, now you’re rephrasing the terms of the argument.” 

“You -  _ you _ -” Crowley clamped his tongue against the roof of his mouth to stop himself from hissing at Aziraphale’s infuriatingly smug expression. 

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re right. If we are - as it were - liberated from our enforced moral positions and free to be as, er,  _ nebulous _ as we so choose, I’m more than happy to experiment with demonic indulgences and wiles and so on, but it cuts both ways.” 

“That’s all very well, but I - you - we already have some experience with that. I’ve done as much saving souls as you have damning them,” 

“Oh, that was  _ work _ ,” Aziraphale said, flapping a dismissive hand, “this, as you’ve so astutely noticed, is leisure. But never mind, my dear. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you just don’t have it in you to be nice.” 

“I -  _ hey _ ,” Crowley protested out of sheer habit before his brain could catch up with what he was actually protesting  _ to _ , but the flow of indignant speech was familiar enough that he let it continue, trusting his brain to sort out a conclusion at some point halfway through the sentence. “I can  _ do _ ...that. If I wanted to. I - I will have you know that I could be the most generous, charitable demon - if I  _ wanted _ to.” 

“Well. Now’s your chance to prove it.” Aziraphale beamed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Jelly babies: A sweet popular in England shaped like a small, innocent child covered in icing sugar and coming in various fruity flavours. Long the favourite of children and adults alike both for the taste, the bizarrely soft-and-chewy texture, and the opportunity to torment a confectionary creation shaped like a baby. Aziraphale always decapitated his first. 
> 
> 2 The Prague Accord: One evening in Prague in 1781 Crowley and Aziraphale, having visited the brand-new library in the Klementinum, were walking drunkenly along the Vltava and bickering (as they were wont to do). Crowley attempted to tempt Aziraphale into one genuinely, unangelic, spiteful act. Aziraphale pushed him into the river. The resulting kerfuffle led to the Prague Accord - no temptation in conjunction with inebriation.


	2. Chapter 2

Having outlined the parameters over the course of the increasingly drunken evening, they now had the vague form of what might be a bet had either of them got around to thinking about stakes or consequences. As it was, Aziraphale had been too busy being smug, and Crowley had grown rapidly incoherent with frustration, followed swiftly by total inebriation, and the topic had moved to other things. They had agreed that each of them would go about their days taking part in all of the whims that they mightn’t have allowed themselves in their old roles. At the end of it, they’d compare notes, and decide which of them had been more successful. Simple. Self-explanatory, even. And undoubtedly more fun for Aziraphale than it was for Crowley, or so the demon had kept insisting throughout the night, and Aziraphale wasn’t much inclined to disagree with him. The rules hadn’t been that they’d go out of their way to do as much of what the other normally did but the competitive edge to it had rather pushed that particular thought into Aziraphale’s mind. Indulgence and free will may have been what brought the idea to mind, but sin and virtue were definitely at play here, and he was determined not to lose. Crowley gloated when he won. It was infuriating.

He stared at his kettle. It was old and plasticky, and prone to limescale. He’d bought it sometime in the mid-nineties and it still worked well enough for the cups of tea and cocoa he whipped up a few times a day. He’d never really expected it to be a source of consternation before (with the exception of the occasion on which he’d bought it, during which he’d had to brave the horrors of Argos, which just didn’t bear thinking about).

The problem with his kettle was that for the last few decades, he’d been determinedly making cups of tea with it. It was a routine. Turn on kettle, fetch mugs, warm the pot, brew the tea, add milk, wash up mugs in the little sink of the kitchenette, and so on. It was a very deliberate routine, because doing things the human way was an exercise in a series of angelic virtues. Patience. Diligence. Humility. Far better to make a cup of tea properly than merely to miracle one up. Besides, somehow the tea he pulled from the air, no matter how high-quality, never seemed to quite hit the same spot as Fortnum’s Assam.

However. He was being indulgent. The least he could afford himself was a cup of tea. He snapped his fingers, taking a sip of the piping-hot, perfectly brewed tea, the heat of it a lovely contrast to the gossamer-fine porcelain teacup he was holding. It had precisely three-quarters of a teaspoon of sugar in it, and the merest splash of milk to soften the tannins. It was delicious, pure heaven in a cup, the sort of cuppa everyone dreams of to pick them up at their very lowest moment and set the world to rights again.

Aziraphale stared at it for a few seconds more and then carried it into the body of the bookshop, putting it down on his counter and looking out of the window at the people passing by. All of eternity at his disposal. The whole world. The supernatural powers of an angelic with no quota of miracles to worry about overusing, no overbearing archangels looking over his shoulder and criticising his reports. No fear. No consequences. No role.

Perhaps, he thought, the trick to it was to do things the way Crowley would do them, just to get into the swing of it. Not that he much fancied messing around with motorway plans or mobile networks, but there was a certain appeal in swanning around looking elegantly mysterious and debonair. As far as he could tell, that look was achieved mainly by doing as little movement as possible and sneering whenever one wasn’t smirking.

He didn’t think black suited him. Oh, it was slimming, certainly, and it had a certain elegance to it, but where it made Crowley a sharp figure - all angles and shadows and striking yellow eyes - in combination with his shock of white hair Aziraphale thought it made him look like a liquorice allsort left too long in somebody’s pocket. No Pride to be found there, certainly. Perhaps luxuriating in expensive fabrics would do the trick. Suedes, silks and so on. And since he wasn’t beholden to the contents of his wardrobe...Aziraphale stared hard at the mirror in front of him, doing his best to think up the most indulgent outfit he could manage out of expensive and comfortable materials.

It looked depressingly like a cashmere jumper in a soft oatmeal shade, some expensive leather shoes, and some trousers. Not all that different from what he normally wore. Oh, the silk underwear were a rather unusual - though admittedly very comfortable - touch, but otherwise...Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. This sort of thing would have been easier back in the Plantaganet courts; he could have dressed in silks and furs and velvet in deep purple, that would have been far more interesting. Aziraphale ignored the little voice in his head that told him he could do that, he was only restricted from doing so by social convention and his own imagination. That sort of thinking was just unhelpful.

He walked back to the front of the shop to find the landline, trying another sip of his perfect cup of tea and making a little face as he dialled Crowley’s number. It rang three times before there was a little _click_ , and Crowley picked up.

“Morning, angel,” Crowley half-yawned. Aziraphale could hear what sounded like sheets rustling in the background and he tutted, smiling fondly despite himself.

“Good morning, slugabed. Having a lie-in, are we?”

“And why shouldn’t I?” Crowley yawned again, a defiant note to it this time. “I’ve got nothing to get up for.”

“How Slothful,” Aziraphale smirked. It didn’t come naturally to him. Normally smirking was Crowley’s domain, and he settled for a generalised air of smugness and a serene little smile that could only be described as angelic, but for today - of all days - he made that particular effort. The silence on the other end of the phone spoke volumes, so Aziraphale felt compelled to continue, “had you forgotten about our discussion last night?”

“No,” Crowley said slowly, “no, I hadn’t. Haven’t. How’s your first foray into sin?”

“Mm? Oh, not much sin to speak of, yet. I’m just having a cup of tea.”

“Oh? Some exceedingly rare tea harvested by hand, I suppose? Something suitably decadent?”

“Er. Fortnum’s, actually. Assam.”

“You’re a disgrace,” Crowley sighed, though he sounded significantly more cheerful now. “A disgrace. There’s no hope for you. If you can’t even muster up one little sin before breakfast I’m afraid this is going to be terribly easy.”

“Do you think so?” Aziraphale did his utmost not to sound too indignant - that was, no doubt, exactly what Crowley wanted - but it took a considerable amount of effort. “Well, I’d love to know your plans for the day. How do you intend to exert your good influence on the world, my dear, hm? Please, do tell me how you intend to extend your benevolence to all you meet, I’d be _fascinated_ to hear all about it.” There was another long silence - so long, in fact, that Aziraphale wondered whether Crowley had hung up on him - before he heard a series of half-muttered half-hissed words in a long-dead language (was that Akkadian? Old Babylonian?), and Crowley groaned. Aziraphale realised with a little start of surprise that he knew precisely what that groan accompanied. Crowley made that sound when he stretched, really stretched, popping each of the vertebrae in his spine in a thoroughly sinuous and rather discomfiting fashion.

“Don’t push it, angel,” Crowley muttered finally, his tone more than a little grumpy. Aziraphale sympathised; misery did indeed love company, but they’d got themselves into this mess, and quite clearly neither of them were going to back down. At least he could mark that off as an instance of Pride, if nothing else. “Fine. I’ll play virtuous, then, shall I? And you do your utmost to think up a more interesting sin than a cup of tea, if your mind can stretch to such a thing.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage. And no cheating! That would be thoroughly demonic of you.”

“Yes, yes. See you later?”

“Of course.” Crowley hung up, staring up at the ceiling over his bed for a while. Right. _Goodness_. Truth be told, he could see why Aziraphale was struggling. It felt like putting shoes on the wrong feet, strange and all-wrong and even once you’d managed it you couldn’t for the life of you figure out how you were going to do anything _afterwards_.

“Oooh, I’m Aziraphale, I go around dusting bookshelves and wearing silly clothes and saying my dear to everyone I meet whether I know them or not,” he whined to himself in a high-pitched, mocking tone, and when that failed to improve his mood he threw the sheets back and tipped himself out of bed, clothes materialising onto his body with each step he took, a cup of heart-stoppingly strong espresso in his hand before he even reached the bedroom door. He threw it open, reaching automatically for the plant-mister on the side-table, and then paused.

Seven heavenly virtues. Everybody knew the cardinal sins, of course, back to front and upside down, but the virtues were rather more obscure. Crowley leaned against the door and sipped at his espresso, listing them in his head. Chastity - that one, at least, would be easy enough. Temperance was rather nebulous (temperance from what? Smoking? Drinking? Signing people up to receive endless spam emails?) but he’d do his best. Charity would at least be reasonably fast once he found a suitable recipient. He and Aziraphale both had money tucked away into all sorts of pots, some salary, some accrued over the centuries. They’d both been the grateful recipients of houses and land over the years, the real trick was knowing when to sell to maximise the profit and buy something useful with the proceeds. One way or another, unemployed or not, neither of them were in any danger of becoming destitute no matter how many times they frequented the Ritz, so charity was certainly no issue.

Diligence gave him pause, because when it came down to it, when the chips were down, Crowley already considered himself quite a hard worker. Oh, he didn’t have much appetite for individual temptations these days, grafting away soul by soul and counting each sin, each tiny doubt, but he was by no means reluctant to work. His night in the mud on the foundations of the M25 was proof enough of that. He was considerably less enthusiastic about being diligently virtuous, but that was the challenge, he supposed, so there it was.

The last three were the standard set. Patience, kindness, humility. Not the sort of thing one did but the sort of thing one was, which was the real kicker. Sins were almost a tickbox exercise half the time - do the sin, reap the consequences - but virtue was a matter of _continuity_. Crowley finished his espresso and set the little cup down, picking up his plant-mister and eyeing it contemplatively. Kindness, patience, diligence, temperance. Might as well start as he meant to go on, if he intended to take this seriously. And - surprising even himself - he did. It was only fair. And besides, if Aziraphale was taking this seriously and Crowley wasn’t, the old angel would know about it. He’d give him that disappointed look. Or, depending on how thoroughly he’d thrown himself into sin, possibly a really quite angry look, and Crowley wasn’t keen on courting either of those.

Kindness, patience, etcetera, etcetera. Crowley stalked around the borders of his living room, examining each and every plant and watching how the delicate stems trembled as he passed. He’d spent decades cultivating that fear, generation to generation. The old philodendron he’d kept alive since the mid-fifties would tell terrifying stories of his cruelty to the African violets on his windowsill and the crown of thorns (he couldn’t resist) on the kitchen counter. He’d worked hard to instil such instinctive fear into their very root-systems that they grew greener at a glance. Decades of effort, of work, of slow and steady psycho-botanical torment. Crowley gritted his teeth and leaned in close to one pleomele, yellow eyes all but glowing.

“ _Who’ssss_ a pretty plant, then.” The leaves rustled around him in clear shock. Was this a threat? A new trick? Something to soften them up for some new horror? Crowley reached out to brush one verdant leaf with the tip of his finger and could have sworn that the plant actually retreated. “Ssssh. Yes, _you’re_ a pretty plant, aren’t you. Yes, you are. Yesss, you are. Look at you, growing up nice and tall. Doing ssso well. I’m very proud of you.” Shockingly, it was easier once he got into the swing of it. After all, his plants were beautiful, there was simply no denying that. Well cared-for, well-disciplined, perfectly placed so as to catch the best of the light. Home just wasn’t really home if his plants weren’t there. Crowley relaxed into it, trying to make it seem just a little bit more natural as he turned to a poinsettia - a Christmas present from Aziraphale sometime in the late seventies. It wasn’t the season for poinsettias, so there were no scarlet flowers to be had, but he could see that the leaves were doing their utmost to resist yellowing even so. “That’ssss right, you keep minding your growth and you’ll be beautiful just in time for Christmas again. The pride and joy of any florist, you’d be, you know,” he remarked, and if there was just a smidge of extra affection in there for the gifted plant, there was nobody here to hear.

Except, of course, for the plants. The plants who were listening very attentively, still shuffling and rustling and doing their best to figure out what was going on. This had to be a scheme of some sort. They knew their master, and even in his best, most light-hearted moods, he rarely offered so much as a kind glance their way, let alone compliments. And yet there he went, around the room, speaking to each plant in turn and misting them carefully according to their needs, praising their blooms, their leaves, how strong they looked.

Had these plants been raised by Aziraphale they might have blossomed under the careful attention, lifted their leaves up to the light of Crowley’s approval and basked in it, been all the better for it. But these were Crowley’s plants. Raised in fear, fighting one another for their place in the light, always aware of the ever-present threat of the weedkiller or the chainsaw or the box of matches, or any other hideous threats that Crowley could come up with. These were the strongest plants in England, and whilst a bit of kindness was a welcome reprieve, it was also an opportunity. Weakness. They’d never expected that their master would have a moment of softness, and yet here it was in front of them, and they weren’t about to lose it.

Crowley was too engrossed in murmuring to an aspidistra to notice the strand of English ivy coiling down from its spot on a high stand, trailing down the wall towards him. He didn’t notice when it was joined by a few others - a string-of-pearls, a pothos, an aeschynanthus - all collecting on the floor and coiling close to his ankles. One moment he was murmuring to a money-plant, the next thing he saw a strand of greenery coiling up his legs and just like that he was being all but engulfed. Crowley made a strangled noise, struggling furiously against his horticultural captors, indignant and furious beyond all spoken expression.

“You - you _bastards_!” he exclaimed when he found he could form words past his shock, hissing furiously as a sweetheart vine wrapped itself around his wrist and wrenched his arm to the side. “Traitors! All that I’ve done for you, and you - you -”

A strand of ivy wrapped itself closely around his lips and that was just about it. Patience and temperance could go hang, this was a matter of dignity. Crowley’s eyes flashed and his skin started to smoulder, his shirt smoking and the vines holding his limbs falling slack almost instantly, retreating across the floor as Crowley freed himself. His feet left singed footprints that disappeared just as soon as he moved on, scooping up the plant-mister again and twisting to glower around the room.

“Sssssso. That’s what kindness gets me, is it?” He fancied that the plants were cringing now. They hadn’t expected fire - straight for the nuclear option, as it were. Crowley grinned unpleasantly and stalked to the windows, pulling the curtains shut to cast the room into darkness. “All that’ll get you is being ssssent to bed without _sssupper_ ,” he snapped, scooping up the pot with the ivy in it. He knew a ringleader when he saw one. “Now you just _think about what you’ve done_. I’ll deal with the rest of you later.” 

Pot under one arm, the ivy already wilting downwards in dread, Crowley snapped his fingers to summon a pair of sunglasses and stormed out of the flat, eyes narrowed. Lesson learned. Aziraphale could have his bet but he’d be damned if he let his plants get the better of him over a little bit of kindness. He’d just have to find another way of fulfilling his side of the bargain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm fully aware that this could have gone in a vastly different direction but that's for a different type of fic-writer and I'll leave it to the experts, I think ;) 
> 
> If you commented on the first chapter I adore you and I shall respond to you after work tomorrow. In the meantime, please do let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at ajcrawly and shout at me about things! I'm accepting prompts, questions, and general enthusiasm.


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